Biden's Problem With Stares

The Leftist Media (redundant, I know) got what they think they wanted yesterday when President Trump had to "surrender" to police in Georgia (state motto: "If you hear banjos, keep rowing") and get a mug shot taken. Hopes were high in liberal circles that Trump would be forced to wear an orange jumpsuit, pose in front of height bars, and take one picture head-on, and a second picture in which he's told to turn his head and cough because the Democrats have him by the balls.

Only that's not quite how it worked out. Trump was allowed to wear his suit, and the chilling glare he gave the camera was, in a word, murderous. Trump clearly signaled that he wasn't beaten and was, in fact, ready to rain Hell down on the mendacious bastards who have been railroading him. And he has a lot of people on his side (most certainly including me). Politics aside, we can't continue to believe that we, as citizens, have freedom and justice in this country unless we defend Trump at this point. 

At such time as the jackals are thrown out of Washington and Trump gets back the Oval Office, I'd like to suggest that he quickly sign an executive order giving the state of Georgia to Australia. What the state lacks in kangaroos, it makes up for in kangaroo courts.

A SAD LOSS

It is with a genuinely heavy heart that I have to share news of the passing of Paul Donohue, a wise and funny voice in the comments section who became a good friend of mine in the past months. Here is the notice, written by Paul himself, that I received yesterday:

Hello and good-bye.

If you have received this email I have moved on to a better place.  Checking out of Hotel California, so to speak. Many of you know that I have been in Hospice for C.O.P.D. and several other things since May 2022.  Well, the end finally arrived today, 08/24/23 at 11:12 a.m.

Thanks for your friendship.  I am grateful that you were a part of my life. There will be no wake, no funeral and no obituary.  I am merely slipping away to a new and better place where I hope that we meet again. Until then.

My wonderful Annie is sending this message at my request. She means everything to me.

Paul Donohue

Paul and I had an instant bond because we were both dealing with death. In my case, the loss of my beloved Kathy and in his case, an untreatable terminal illness with time running out. That doesn't mean our correspondence was depressing, because it wasn't. Rather, it meant that we were both inclined to dispense with trivial matters and communicate with a comfort and honesty that would normally have taken years to establish. His good humor lifted me when I needed it and, according to Paul, my humor (and Johnny Optimism, and Kathy's "Skin of a Hen's Teeth" book) did the same for him.

I miss him already but I can say that he struck me as a man who had made his peace with his situation and faced the inevitable without fear. 

So hoist a glass in his honor and say a prayer for this good man and his family. Paul, it was an honor and a pleasure knowing you.

Nose For News

Not.

With writers and actors in Hollywood walking picket lines, people who write about showbiz news have got pretty slim pickings lately. Which is why they've decided to pick a nose, so to speak, to get agitated about.

Specifically, they're in a dither about the upcoming biopic about conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein which stars Bradley Cooper in the starring role. Well, Bradley Cooper and a prosthetic nose which some people are calling an anti-semitic insult because unlike Bernstein, Cooper isn't Jewish and should therefore never appear on film with an artificially augmented sniffer. 

Cooper is being accused of wearing "Jewface," although Bernstein's family says that he looks fine and a careful examination of historical documents shows that Bernstein actually had a pretty big beak (which looked good on him), especially in his senior years.

The trailer for the film looks like what it is: glitzy, high-dollar, Oscar bait with an impressive cast and a compelling story. Which makes it pretty darn hard to believe that anti-semitism has played any part in establishing Mr. Cooper's look for the film. Still, those who want to be offended are enjoying being offended and insisting that no one who isn't Jewish should ever again portray a Jew on film. Unless the actor is Black, Hispanic, Asian, or sexually ambiguous.

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HORSE SH... UM... MEDICINE

I'll try not to write too much about Covid here because everyone is sick of hearing about it. But I will tell you that I'm experiencing a lot of rage as truths leak out about how the American people (and world) were lied to, betrayed, robbed, and victimized.

Rather than subject everyone to a rant that could go on for days, I want to direct your attention to a short Youtube video from Dr. John Campbell, who is far and away the most accurate source of information about all of this that I'm aware of. Unless you're watching him (and I have been, for years), you don't really know what's happened and what is still happening.

In this video, Dr. Campbell shares the interesting news that the FDA has just, in the words of Elmer Fudd, "vewwy, vewwy quietwy" issued a notice that it's perfectly okay for doctors to prescribe Ivermectin to treat Covid despite the fact that the FDA prevented that during the height of Covid while advancing the lie that Ivermectin was only horse medicine (the FDA still features a picture of a horse on their page about Ivermectin) rather than one of the most-used human medications on the planet (winning a Nobel Prize in 2015) with over 4.5 billion doses administered to humans.

Subtle, FDA. Very subtle.

For those who don't want to watch the 15-minute video, here's the quick version: Ivermectin was known to be cheap, available, and at least possibly effective for the treatment of Covid. BUT at about 10¢ a pill, nobody was going to make any money. Big Pharma wanted to push their untested (and unsafe and ineffective) vaccines, but they could only do so if they got an emergency waiver to bypass standard safety measures. And the only way to get an emergency waiver is to show that there's no other effective treatment available. So money changed hands - a lot of money - and suddenly Ivermectin was being officially described as only fit for horses and cows, potentially poisonous, and doctors were forbidden from prescribing it. Studies into the efficacy of Ivermectin went unfunded and independent studies showing beneficial effects were ridiculed by (formerly) respectable medical journals.

Big Pharma made billions of dollars (including profits on the "miracle" drug Remdesivir that doesn't actually reduce the mortality rate for Covid patients), insane numbers of people died, doctors who complained were persecuted, and everyone got jabbed with some damn thing that doesn't keep you from getting Covid or spreading it, but may give you myocarditis, blood clots, a stroke, or just kill you outright. Interesting trivia note: according to Dr. Campbell (who always carefully cites the official studies and reports) only 2% of negative vaccine reactions were officially reported. Wow. And long-term effects? Well, I guess we'll all find out, won't we?

So, who has been punished for the Covid-19 plague? No one. Who got fabulously wealthy from it? Big Pharma, political enablers, and (most likely) the people who funded the creation of the virus in the first place. And nobody seems to give a damn.

Meanwhile, the head of the Proud Boys is looking at 33 years in the slammer for his alleged role in the January 6th "insurrection that never happened" despite his not even being present on the big day.

The juxtaposition of these two examples of "justice" sadly tells me much more about the current state of our country than I ever wanted to know.

Ash Not What Your Country Can Do For You

Mainstream media pundits were recently taken aback when it became utterly and finally clear that President Joe Biden has now reached mental depths so low that he can't even respond to the easiest questions imaginable.

As a case in point, a reporter asked Biden for remarks about the holocaust-style wildfire in Maui that incinerated at least 99 innocent victims with over 1000 people still missing and 75% of the burned-out ruins unsearched.

Even a brain-injured sloth would have said something like "my heart goes out to the victims and their families" or "As a people, all of America feels this pain and all of us will work to rebuild these homes and lives" or "I will do everything in my power to bring comfort and relief to all who were affected by this tragedy."  Or if he wasn't feeling voluble, how about "it's very sad" or "terrible, just terrible."

But instead, Joe only fired back "No comment!" and flashed a disturbing grin before wandering off aimlessly. 

Following this same strategy, condolence card makers like Hallmark are now well-positioned to save rivers of ink when the front of a card says "On the passing of your Mother..." and the inside just says "No Comment."

What a corrupt brain-dead POS jerkoff this ancient sack of malfeasance is.

Trump Indictments

There's not a lot I can say about the latest round of Trump indictments, because I think my unvarnished thoughts would likely make me the target of a federal probe if not a flat-out assassination attempt. So I'll just gently suggest that we seem to have moved beyond even the pretense that "the law" or anything like it is being used to persecute Trump, but rather it is a blatant use of (im)pure political power by the Democrats to destroy opposition, make sure no honest election can ever again take place, and instill fear into anyone who would dare to ask for proof that elections have been conducted fairly. 

So I'm feeling pretty damn strongly at the moment that it's about time for actions to happen that can help show those in power the error of their ways. Although let me be very clear that I'm not encouraging another January 6th-style insurrection in which unarmed people saunter around public buildings taking selfies. 

Nope, I can't endorse the idea of unarmed people at all.

State of Disaster

The wildfire that destroyed the scenic town of Lahaina on Maui was nothing short of horrific. The death count keeps rising and it's my sad suspicion that what's been reported to date will likely be a fraction of the final tally. 

I've visited Hawaii many times, having family there, and so have strong feelings about what happened - and the likelihood that it didn't have to happen, or at least not with the tragic severity we've seen.

The problem, as illustrated in the "from the vault" posts below, is that Hawaii creates such a laid-back attitude in people that important things fall between the cracks and don't get done. There's always tomorrow and, if it's a beautiful day, well, there will be another tomorrow after that. This creates enormous inefficiency and ineptitude in all government-managed services including, sadly, emergency services. Case in point: some years ago, a study showed that Lahaina was at huge risk from wildfires. But nobody got around to fixing it. The weather was too nice.

On a visit to Oahu some years ago, I was startled one morning when my parents' home started shaking around me - hard. It was a modest earthquake with a magnitude of about six. Not big enough to level structures, but enough to make for a pretty terrifying wake-up call. But when the shaking stopped, there was still a significant worry: would there be a tsunami? And were my family and I on high-enough ground?

A lot depended on the strength of the earthquake (which we still didn't know) and where it was centered (which we also didn't know). Turning on the radio, we searched the dial for any news at all but found none. So we loaded into a car and drove higher into the mountains.

We eventually parked at an altitude that seemed safe-ish and continued to listen for radio updates. But it was a Sunday and there was no live programming at all. Just pre-recorded programs about investing, real estate, and getting right with God. And we never did get a damn update from any officials. We just waited until we thought it was safe to go home - encouraged by someone in the neighborhood who said that they were going to call the cops on us for looking "suspicious." Maybe they thought I'd kidnapped my 80-year-old mother. The bastards.

But my point here (and below) is that while Hawaii is a nice place to visit, you wouldn't want to live there. Liberal politics and an almost inescapable laissez-faire culture have made it unsafe.

From the Vault: 1/15/2018

The Aloha State of panic.

On Saturday, palm trees swayed in tropical breezes, warm surf washed pristine beaches, and tourists in Hawaii wept, screamed, cowered in fear, and stuffed their children into storm drains because of an "oopsy" alert (delivered to phones, radio stations, and wailing sirens) saying the island paradise was about to be vaporized by incoming nuclear missiles.

We single out "tourists" as being terrified rather than actual citizens of Hawaii, because those who have lived there for longer than a week already know the Aloha State's ill-kept secret: local government officials screw up pretty much everything they touch, so the odds of a false alarm were (as Trump might say) yuge.

We have plenty of personal experience with Hawaii from which to draw this conclusion. The state, which is almost psychedelically beautiful, has several factors working against it. The first is that it's essentially a jungle, with rainwater, vines, lizards, and highly aggressive insect colonies attacking every manmade bit of infrastructure on a non-stop basis.

The second is that all government functions are run by aloha-shirted Democrats and can't-be-fired civil servants, all of whom have a uniquely Hawaiian year-around "Spring fever" which keeps them from really committing to work when the weather is nice. As in, "daily."

While overt public terror is nothing to laugh at, except from the mainland, things could have been a lot worse: imagine what was going through the minds of our military personnel who were wondering if they should quickly launch a counterattack before going out in a Slim Pickens-style blaze of glory.

Theoretically, all of this was caused by one person "pushing the wrong button." Arguably the worst mistake made by a Hawaiian government official since Department of Health official Loretta Fuddy stated that she (and she alone) had looked at Obama's birth certificate and sent him a copy.

Shortly after which, she became the only fatality in a plane crash. Oopsy.

From the Vault: 8/24/2018

A lot of people might get lei'd to rest...

Within the next few hours, we'll know if Hawaii has been devastated by its worst hurricane in decades or if the fates have smiled once again on the islands and steered Hurricane Lane back out to sea.

If disaster is avoided, however, it certainly won't be because of anything the local government and emergency preparedness agencies have done (specifically on the island of Oahu, the home to Honolulu, Waikiki, and Pearl Harbor). To put it delicately, the officials' preparations would feel right at home on a pupu platter...because those plans are pupu from top to bottom.

A quick bit of back story: for many years, Stilton's parents lived on Oahu (a sibling still does), and so we were frequent visitors. The island is unquestionably spectacularly beautiful, but anything government has touched has gone straight to hell. Pretty much nothing works right in Hawaii, in part because the island's culture encourages a lackadaisical attitude toward anything like efficiency, responsibility, and basic competence. When visiting, our day-to-day mantra was "Nothing is easy in Hawaii."

It's among our most socialist states, with almost everyone getting some kind of handout from the government. It has the highest per capita homeless population of any state. Prices for everything are sky-high. Their medical system has been described as that of a "third world country" owing to doctors fleeing the state because of unsustainably small payments from Medicare and Medicaid (a canary in the coal mine that we on the mainland had better pay attention to). And for many years, building standards were so lax (and builders so casually inept) that a significant percentage of homes offer no protection at all in case of emergency conditions. Frankly, Gilligan's Island had a way better model of sustainability.

Which now brings us to Hurricane Lane. Considering hurricanes are pretty much a known threat to Hawaii, you'd think they'd have emergency plans out the wazoo. But no, their plans remain firmly in their wazoos along with the residue of a lot of macaroni salad and Spam.

Residents are being warned to head to shelters for safety, but there are a few little problems with that. For one thing, no bureaucrats have bothered to keep a list of official shelters. In reviewing the shelters they can find, it seems that exactly none of them have been hardened to stand up to even a Category One hurricane (the weakest and most cuddly sized). But having the roof collapse on their heads may be the least of people's problems because many of the shelters are located in flood zones. Apparently, the emergency preparedness folks never considered the likelihood that a hurricane just might be bringing along a buttload of rain.

If people do go to one of these unsafe shelters (and there's only room for about one-fifth of the population), they're being told they'll have to survive in a 3-foot by 3-foot space for up to two weeks, they need to bring their own bedding and anything else important, and - oh yeah! - bring their own food. Because it never dawned on Hawaiian officials that people in shelters might actually need to eat. Although it being Hawaii, there's a fairly good chance that the waves crashing though the shelter doors will bring fresh fish, and coconuts will regularly be exploding through windows at 100 mph. So there are some benefits to living in Paradise.

We're obviously hoping the best for the people of Hawaii, but think this should serve as a graphic (and hopefully not deadly) reminder that there's a great danger in putting too much faith in government bureaucrats to watch after your safety, welfare, and future.

Which is, of course, exactly what those on the Left are shooting for. And if they get their way, we'll all be saying "Aloha" to our very way of life.

Summery Judgement

I'm back from my travels and once again experiencing being kiln-fired in Texas. Today's actual high is predicted to be 105° with a heat index of "lawyer's section of Hell." And that's hot.

I'm glad to say my family-related trip was a great success and gave me a much-needed emotional boost. Although I got off to a rough start when I flew into Indianapolis, the city of my birth, and then needed to drive a rental car to Mishawaka, Indiana about 150 miles away. I entered the destination into my GPS and set off confidently, enjoying the rolling scenery of the Hoosier state and the abundant corn fields.

A little too abundant.

After about a half hour, it started to strike me as odd that I was still only driving zig-zag patterns on back roads between fields so close I could have brushed my fingertips on cornstalks. I suspected a problem with my GPS but the roads were so small that there was no berm and no place to pull off to play with my phone. And I mean no place - no restaurants, gas stations, or rest areas. So I kept driving for almost five hours before reaching my destination - a Holiday Inn Conference Center in the middle of nowhere.

Only it wasn't "nowhere," of course - it just looked that way because it turned out a hidden setting in Google Maps had helpfully defaulted to "avoid highways" when using GPS and it had done the job flawlessly. 

AI is not going to even break a sweat destroying me.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

• I'm still not following news in any kind of meaningful way, but I've heard enough about Trump's most recent BS indictments to be highly pissed off. Didn't we recently have hearings in Washington that failed to prove there even was any insurrection-type event or planning for same? Meanwhile, Adam "Googly Eyes" Schiff is pushing for Trump's trial(s) to be televised in the name of "transparency." Yeah, Adam, that would be transparent alright. 

• I'm embarking on a much-needed weight-loss program with no enthusiasm whatsoever. To kick things off, I finally stepped on the scale yesterday and the readout said "Hey, one at a time." After which I took a saucy "Before" photo in my skivvies and no, you will never see it here or anywhere else. I look like I should be holding a chain attached to slave girl Carrie Fisher.

I've considered bariatric surgery but it still sounds too extreme and potentially hazardous. And I've heard about "Ozempic" and similar classes of drugs, but don't know anyone who's had firsthand experience with them (plus, they cost a metric assload). So for now, I'm doing it old school: calorie counting and exercise. Wish me luck.

• I see that Joe Biden has now officially passed the "one year of vacation since taking office" mark. That means that he's been on vacation for 40% of his presidency, for which we should be grateful considering the damage he causes the other 60% of the time.

"Jill, what's a four-letter word for woman ending in U-N-T?" "Aunt." "Um...got an eraser?"

• Speaking of vacations, it looks like I won't be going to any exotic locations for, oh, the rest of my life. Because I was just starting the process of filing for a passport (my old one expired) and they've got a typical governmental Catch-22. My application (along with my photo and proof of citizenship) has to be filed in person at the post office and this can only be done by appointment.  If you click on the government's link to schedule such an appointment, you will theoretically be shown appointments available for the next four weeks. Only there aren't any. At any post office within 20 miles of here. And as a special touch, the website just gives the message "there are no appointments available at this location in the next four weeks. Please try another location."

In other words, you can't just shrug and schedule an appointment for 6 weeks out, or 12 weeks out, or any OTHER time beyond 4 weeks...but there are also no appointments available anywhere in that 4-week window. Which effectively ends the process with the government saying "screw you and go away." Although obviously, I can't go far away.

Bastards.